ecology

Each time I go to Manila, I can’t help but feel a bit overwhelmed by the hustle and bustle of the city. It seems that with each visit I make, a newer, taller building is being built, a road is being paved and, from time to time, a new shopping mall is waiting to be opened.

These are all signs of a rising middle class reaping the benefits of the country’s impressive economic performance.

The island nation, where people’s sunny disposition matches its warm climate, has also emerged as the newest darling destination for over four million tourists last year. In 2014, Palawan was voted the most exotic island in the world in its annual Condé Nast’s Reader’s Choice Awards.

I created the Charity in April 2011 because I could see, through the work of my brilliant global planning team in Arup that, while the path towards a low carbon resilient world was getting clearer, the overall rate of change is too slow to meet the required reduction of emissions and ecological footprint to create a more stable world for us to live in. We need to scale up - and speed up.